Tag: piano

Luu Hong Quang’s Liszt recording proclaims its lustre on Rattle Records

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FRANZ LISZT –  Etudes d’execution transcendante S.139 (Transcendental Etudes)

Luu Hong Quang (piano)

Rattle Records RAT-D152 2024

Reviewed  “Middle C” November 2024

Vietnamese pianist Luu Hong Quang is currently (2024) in Wellington while studying for his Doctorate of Music with Professor Jian Liu at Victoria University’s School of Music. It’s a far-flung location from which to throw down the gauntlet to the wider world of pianism at large – but Quang has done this with a new release from Rattle Records which presents one of the piano repertoire’s most formidably challenging works, Franz Liszt’s “Etudes d’execution transcendante”. The recording was actually one that Quang made, appropriately enough, in the concert hall built next to Liszt’s actual birthplace in Raiding, Austria (formerly known as Doborján when part of Hungary at the time of the composer’s birth). No precise recording dates are given, though the pianist recounts in a booklet note a sense of the pilgrimage undertaken over a period of eighteen months to learn and master the work, which culminated in his first public performance in December 2022 at the Vietnam National Academy of Music in Hanoi. (I have since contacted Luu Hong Quang and learned that the recording took place in July, 2023.)

The genesis of Liszt’s Etudes is well-known, having their origins in twelve studies (Étude en douze exercices) he first wrote in 1826 when barely sixteen, then majorly elaborating on them in 1837 (Douze Grandes Études), after having fallen under the performing spell of Paganini and determined to emulate on the piano what the already legendary fiddler was achieving on the violin. By the 1850s, and having long given up the life of the virtuoso, Liszt then resolved to bring some of his youthful technical excesses to heel and “simplify” the studies (only one, “Mazeppa”, is considered even more difficult in its 1852 revision), emphasising the pieces’ poetry and grandeur and generally “playing down” their overtly prestidigitatorial qualities. And while the lighter Erard pianos of the 1830s made those earlier versions less awkward to manage, the heavier “action” of the newer pianos from Russia and Vienna which were gaining in popularity made passages from the 1837 Etudes impossible for all but the fingers of a Liszt!

Even so, for years these works were regarded as the preserve of “super-virtuosi”, having to wait until February 1903 to received their first documented premiere performance as a complete set from the legendary Ferruccio Busoni at the Berlin Beethoven-Saal. Traversals of the entire set remained rare both in concert and on record in the intervening years up to the 1960s – notables such as Egon Petri (1927), Jose Iturbi (1930), Jean Doyen (1943) and Earl Wild (1957) gave concert performances – but the first complete recording wasn’t set down until 1956, when Russian/American pianist Alexander Borovsky recorded the work for Vox, followed then by Gyorgy Cziffra in 1958 and Lazar Berman in 1959. Incidentally (and surprisingly), I can find only a single concert performance of the cycle thus far documented in New Zealand, that by visiting American pianist Kyrill Gerstein performed in Auckland in 2015.

Flash forward to 2024 and it seems as if a “virtuoso revolution” has taken place in world pianism since the Millenium, with almost fifty versions of the Transcendental Etudes I counted as currently available on recordings listed on the prestigious “Presto Classical” website. And now adding to that number will be Luu Hong Quang’s brilliantly-played disc, produced and sonorously recorded and mixed by Paul Carasco, and elegantly presented by Steve Garden’s Rattle Records in association with the support of Professor Jack Richards.

I decided I wouldn’t here set Quang’s recording against any other of today’s “super-virtuosi” for direct comparison, but rather allow my responses to resonate within my own sound-world of accumulated memory and feeling from experiences of first getting to know these works well. This took place through what have since become classic recordings of the complete 1852 set made by Louis Kentner, Lazar Berman and Claudio Arrau (I also heard a recital disc of Vladimir Ashkenazy’s at this time, though, sadly, only of excerpts).  These were the performances which I’d first encountered and which had, from my first hearing of “Harmonies du soir” on that single Ashkenazy disc, drawn me irretrievably into the sound-world of what I came to regard as one of the composer’s most astounding creative achievements. In the light of those three stellar, though vastly different performances quoted above, Quang’s performances are as much redolent of my youthful impressions of this music as they seem freshly-minted to my ears – on a superficial level they most resemble Louis Kentner’s in that they seem primarily concerned with each piece’s “inner being” rather than its external display of whatever. Which is not to say that Lazar Berman, Claudio Arrau or Vladimir Ashkenazy all put virtuoso display ahead of poetic feeling in their readings, but rather that Quang, like Kentner, seemed to unselfconsciously intertwine the music’s “wow” element inextricably with its poetry, so as to constantly draw attention to the view rather than merely to an interpreter’s presentation of it.

Thus the opening “Preludio”, intended to arrest the listener’s attention right from the outset, does so with a true Lisztian combination of brilliance, quixotic wit and suggestive harmonic sleight-of-hand, Quang announcing the composer’s and his music’s credentials in an action-packed nutshell. Though most of the studies have descriptive titles, we’re then plunged straight into one of the two for whom Liszt named merely by their key, in this case A Minor, whose opening rhythmically resembles Beethoven’s famous C Minor Symphony’s opening, but whose restless, quixotic character suggests a more compulsively whimsical spirit – Quang’s playing brings to mind his own reference in the notes to Paganini himself.

Things settle down with the beautiful “Paysage”, a landscape conceived here, it seems from “out of the air’, such is the spontaneity of phrasing and colour that Quang conjures from the notes, with the wonderfully dramatic midway modulation taking us into a differently-hued world for a few precious moments before the tranquility returns. This is all precipitately detonated by the opening drama of “Mazeppa”, with its arresting opening chords and portentous stirrings of agitation leading to the remorseless drama of a wild and torturous captive horseback ride, Quang’s strength and agility ably suggesting by turns the hero’s desperate plight, his longing for release, and eventually, his triumphal redemption. And, in the wake of these heady heroics comes the alchemic magic of the following “Feux Follets” (Will-o’the Wisps), one of Liszt’s absolute masterpieces, famous for its demands on the player regarding velocity, tonal shading, finger-control and poetic evocation, all of which Quang achieves with meticulous differentiation and bewildering evanescent manifestation.

How different is the dark, mysteriously-voiced “Vision” which follows, a grim and black-toned G minor presence whose aspect takes on a proud glow from within under Quang’s fingers as the music’s heroic spirit is awakened and enlivened. Perhaps he isn’t as intensely visionary as Kentner or as granite-toned as Arrau in this music but, as in the following “Eroica”, he conveys in places as telling an awareness of the music’s poetry as its physical forcefulness – he grows the latter piece through its strong-willed opening flourishes, treating us to an intrepid journey from whimsical beginnings through a vainglorious display of valour, before circumspection proclaims that honour is satisfied. No such hint of heedfulness attends the next piece, however – the tumultuous “Wilde Jagd” beloved of German folklore as “Wild Hunt”, here given a tremendous, frenetic opening by Quang before settling to the chase in an almost carnival spirit, complete with a “hunting song”! The subsequent building-up of the music’s sheer physicality and strenuous vigour reaches cataclysmic levels in the pianist’s hands before it all seems to collapse in sheer exhaustion!

All of this leads to what seem to me the disc’s most remarkable performances, beginning with the heart-warming poetry of Quang’s playing of “Ricordanza” (Memories), a piece haunted by ghosts of memory depicted in the music’s piquant figurations and flourishes, shades of the past “filled out” with exquisitely-wrought manifestations – Busoni’s famous and incomparable “discovery of old love-letters” description of the piece is referred to by the pianist in his notes. As befits one of the great musical love-poems, Quang’s playing touches the heart of this listener for one, with its spontaneous-sounding evocations of remembrances couched in terms of a slow-moving, emotion-laden “dance” framed by frequent impulses denoting poignantly-suggestive things whose nature remains indefinite.

The following F Minor Study follows on its predecessor’s heels almost attacca – as well might a piece marked allegro agitato molto!  Quang gives the oft-repeated opening figure more urgency than does Kentner, who keeps the figurations in trajectorial step with their overall context (by contrast Lazar Berman almost eviscerates the figures’ notes themselves with his rapid-fire delivery!). But how deftly Quang manages the midway transition back to the piece’s beginning, splendidly reiterating both the angst-laden declamatory theme and the return to the opening agitations, with those exciting  running syncopations leading to the piece’s coup de grace!

I’ve written of the indelible impression made on me by this work as one wrought by “Harmonies du soir” – and so it’s fitting that Quang here brings the listener to a kind of apex of achievement with this study and its “mirror image” that follows, the equally remarkable “Chasse Neige”. But even now, fifty years after first hearing those opening notes of “Harmonies” sound their opening embrace that enfolds those impulses they give rise to, I still find myself wreathed in that same wonderment as nature’s bells are softly set ringing and then enjoined by a second theme to give full tongue in praise of creation’s beauteous manifestations – and here, nothing is forced or strained but wholeheartedly ‘’released” through the pianist’s obvious love of his subject and his palpable skills and sensibilities.

How prescient of Liszt to give the cycle’s last word to nature, leaving the listener with a sense of worldly impermanence, almost a “Sic transit gloria mundi” observation as the remorseless snows cover over all trace of the lives made so manifest throughout the rest of the pieces – Quang is totally at one with the composer, here, revelling in the overlapping surges of tone in the piece’s middle section and bringing off the concluding “claw-like” gesture of farewell at the end with suitable gravitas and finality.

Luu Hong Quang would do well to be proud of his response to this “marathon” challenge  with, in his own words  – “a true milestone in (an) artistic journey” – may we hope he might, before too long, undertake to put a proper girdle about the earth by enabling this astonishing work to live and breathe in concert for only a second time within these far-flung spaces of our own hemisphere!

 

Poetry and drama at the keyboard from pianist Quang Hong Luu

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Quang Hong Luu

St.Andrew’s 2024 Lunchtime Concert Series presents:

QUANG HONG LUU (piano)
– a programme of 19th Century Romantic Piano Music

FRANZ LISZT – “Funérailles” from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses S.173
ROBERT SCHUMANN – Kinderscenen (Scenes from Childhood) Op.15
JOHANNES BRAHMS – Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor Op.5

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Thursday, 19th September, 2024

Vietnamese-born Quang Hong Luu began his early music studies in 1997 at the Vietnam National Academy of music in Ha Noi before completing a Bachelor of Music with Professor Kyunghee Lee at the Australian Academy of Music and Performing Arts, and going on to study his Masters degree at Montreal University in Canada with the great Đặng Thái Sơn, winner of the 1980 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.  He’s now in Wellington at Te Kōkī School of Music at Victoria University, pursuing his Doctorate of Music under the guidance of Dr. Jian Liu.

I unfortunately missed an earlier recital given by Quang at St. Andrew’s in June this year, at which he played the music of Debussy and Liszt, the latter a composer whose work Annees de Pelerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”)  is the research topic of Quang’s doctoral thesis. On that occasion he played the first of the work’s three “years” – the Premiere Annee: Suisse (“First Year: Switzerland”). This time round we were given a single-movement work of Liszt’s, Funérailles, taken from a different set of pieces, the Harmonies Poétiques et Religeuses. Quang’s recital was in fact a kind of “19thCentury Romantics” collection, which included works by Schumann and Brahms, all of which were connected with one another by subject, circumstance and personality.

In this programme’s case, however, the “chronology” of the individual pieces had to give way to temperament and circumstance.  Beginning the recital with the earliest of the three works, Robert Schumann’s enchanting Kinderscenen, though an attractive prospect in itself, would have pitted two “heavyweight” pieces in a cheek-by-jowl confrontation, works moreover whose respective creators were fated, it seemed, to be at odds with each other right from the beginning of their short-lived association! Schumann’s work seemed, therefore, the perfect “rainbow bridge” by which both Quang Hong Luu and his audience could traverse the yawning gap between the worlds of Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms.

So, the recital began with Liszt’s Funeráilles (“Funeral”) – a piece dated October 1849, though it related as much to the events of 1848 in Hungary, an uprising against Hapsburg rule that failed and resulted in the deaths or banishment of three of Liszt’s friends involved in the proceedings (one of these being the former Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Lajos Batthyány, executed in October 1849). No blacker nor more fraught and dread-laden sounds could have been conceived at the outset as Quang’s remorselessly-delivered opening bell-tones intensified the music’s menacing tread and gradually tightened its grip in an upward vortex of attenuated alarm. The sombre funeral-march that followed eventually emerged in the pianist’s hands as a tender, upwardly beseeching lagrimoso, before reaching a brief climax which prompted a passage as distinctive as that of Liszt’s great contemporary, Frederic Chopin in his famous Op.53 A-flat Polonaise’s depiction of “the thunderous hooves of the Polish Cavalry”, here as powerful, heroic and cataclysmic in itself up to its fortissimo peak.

Quang Hong Luu

A furious flourish led to an angry restatement of part of the funeral march, Quang allowing a broken, haunted rendition of parts of the lagrimoso theme and a defiant restatement of the climax of the “thunderous hooves” section to at once “reawaken” and unify one’s sensibilities, a “wringing-out” of the emotions to devastating effect at the stark, muted end of the piece.

After such travails, how even more appropriate the insertion of Schumann’s “Kinderscenen” now seemed in the scheme of things! And its opening, with the perfectly suitable title Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of Foreign Lands and Peoples) seemed in itself to help reframe the experience of the Liszt work we had just heard to a kind of profound “imagining” – of course Schumann was at pains to emphasise that his pieces were impressions of an adult looing back on childhood, summed up at the end by the piece Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks).

Quang’s playing was simple and unaffected at the outset, giving the brief hesitation of wonderment at each “rounding off” of the second subject its due without exaggeration. An eager and bright-eyed Curiose Geschichte (A curious story) tumbled into a vigorous Hasche-Mann (Catch me if you can), while the beautifully “echoed” phrasings of Bittendes Kind (Pleading child) found an almost Dickensian contrast in the following Glückes genug (happy enough). Quang maintained the pomp and ceremony of Wichtige Begebenheit (An Important Event) right through to the end, rather than observing a diminuendo leading towards the final chord, as some interpreters do, anticipating the onset of the contemplative (and justly-famous) Traumerei (Dreaming), its reprise here under Quang’s fingers especially tender.

A gentle awakening “at the Fireside” (Am Kamin) was followed by a roisterous Ritter vom Steckenpferd (Knight of the Hobbyhorse), whose exertions may have been too much of  a good thing, leading as they did to the world of wonderment and anxiety in itself that Fast zu Ernst (Almost too serious) so touchingly portrayed, and even went on to suggest the presence of  phantom-like shadows in the following Fürchtenmachen (Frightening). Quang allowed the first few measures of the following Kind im Einschlummern (Child falling asleep) to melt the E minor anxieties into a central major-key section of ravishing beauty, a magical transformation of time and consciousness becoming music. And magical, too, was the full-circle epilogue Der Dichter spricht (The poet speaks), the voice warm, dreamy, confiding, philosophical, at once confidential and candid, Quang sensitively evoking the composer’s voice recognising and paying retrospective homage to his own world.

Appropriately, the pianist left the platform for a moment, but was soon back with us, ready to once again “reimagine” with us the territory about to be explored via the last, and most epic of Johannes Brahms’s three sonatas for piano, the mighty Op. 5 in F Minor, a work amazingly wrought by a twenty year-old (surely among the most prodigious compositional feats of musical history!). Brahms took the work to Düsseldorf when first meeting Robert and Clara Schumann and presented it to the by-then-ailing Schumann, who nevertheless roused himself sufficiently to pen his famous “New Paths” article (his last) in his influential periodical “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik”, in which he heaped effusive praise on the embarrassed younger composer, writing of one who was “fated to give expression to the times in the highest and most ideal manner, who would achieve mastery, not step by step, but at once, springing like Minerva fully armed from the head of Jove. And now, here he is, a young fellow at whose cradle graces and heroes stood watch…..his name is Johannes Brahms….”

After briefly leaving the platform in the wake of the Schuman Quang Hong Luu came back in galvanised for action. His attack at the Sonata’s beginning had everything, strength, power, focus and vigour, the music flung towards us unapologetically, with both ends of the keyboard activated in the manner born, and with the opening flourish countered by a louring, grimly-voiced theme underpinned by reminiscences of Beethoven’s “Fate” motive from his C Minor Symphony, and later a grandly lyrical theme whose extended variant climbed gloriously up the keyboard and proclaimed its majesty, before Quang reiterated the challenge and plunged the music into as combatative a development as one could imagine, the four-note Beethoven theme insistently underpinning the reiteration of the work’s opening. It was as visceral an encounter between elements of the classical sonata as could be imagined, evoking the same kind of titanic forces as those of Beethoven’s in his “Hammerklavier” Sonata.

Having spent his energies battling the forces of fate in this first movement, Brahms then evoked a different world of poetry and recaptured sentiment in a second movement, Andante expressivo, which pianist Claudio Arrau once described as “the most beautiful love music after Tristan”. Quang’s playing was gorgeously poetic and gently-flowing, the second episode in particular here made absolutely enchanting, with beautiful timing of those Schumannesque bass notes that seemed to conversely “float” the music in celestial waters, eventually reaching a magnificent climax whose depth of tone and variety of colour seemed positively orchestral in its impact. It was no Quang Hong Luu

wonder that Brahms seemed at the piece’s end to have difficulty in relinquishing his hold on such a spellbinding mood.

Quang then tore into the Waltz-Scherzo movement with unbridled energies, more muscular and rapier-like in its cut-and-thrust than various heartier, more bucolic renditions I’ve heard. How beautiful and hymn-like, by contrast, was the Trio, still with an occasional Beethoven-motif presence, but stressing the song aspect over the dance for a few fleeting moments, even if the return of the scherzo’s main theme brought with it something more of a wild ride in Quang’s hands than a waltz-dance!

The Beethoven motif all but dominated the next movement, an Intermezzo with the title Rückblick (“Looking back”) something which obviously recalled the first movement’s Beethoven quote, though Quang’s voicing of it brought to my mind a reminiscence from another work, the slow movement of the “Tempest” Sonata, which Brahms would surely have known. And the frequent repetition of the opening ‘descending’ motif engendered something almost Faustian, its evocation of solitude and wandering from Part Two of Goethe’s work, a kind of “passage” towards a truly heroic final-movement scenario.

That’s what this last movement built up to from a series of brusque-sounding statements at its beginning, which Quang then contrasted with a beautifully-flowing-in-tempo major key sequence, before returning to the brusque opening, and ANOTHER beautifully contrasted rejoiner – this time, an even richer and nobler contrast, with characteristic Germanic woodland harmonic touches at the end – so nostalgic for all their fleeting quality. Quang then took up the composer’s invitation to pick up handfuls of the notes and run with them, whirling us through the excitement of, firstly an accelerando, and then a vertiginous coda which, after a few breathtaking moments solidly and heroically proclaimed the piece’s conclusion – what a work, and what a pianist!

 

Where Fairburn Walked – worlds of home-grown sounds

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WHERE FAIRBURN WALKED
– an exploration of New Zealand Piano Music

Jian Liu (piano)

Rattle RAT – D149 2024 (3 CD set)

In 1987 Kiwi songwriter Ross Mullins wrote a song “Where Fairburn Walked” for an album “Passing Shots”, a song subsequently taken up by singer Caitlin Smith in her 2004 album “Aurere”. Various commentators whose opinions I’ve read have since expressed regret that the song never quite achieved what was deemed “classic status”, though the appearance of its title on a new set of recordings on the Rattle label suggests that It hasn’t entirely been forgotten – in fact I was able to ”connect the dots” in making the discovery that the Steve Garden who currently runs Rattle Records was also the producer of Ross Mullins’ “Passing Shots” album on which the “Fairburn” song itself first appeared.

The “Fairburn” of the song is of course poet A.R.D. Fairburn (1904-57), who, at the time of his premature death was considered one of the country’s most important poets – his work has since survived a something of a post-mortem dip in status and regard, with his contribution continuing to undergo a revitalised appraisal. So, when I first saw this new Rattle compilation of twentieth (and twenty-first) century New Zealand piano music bearing the title “Where Fairburn walked” my first thoughts were of some of the poet’s laconic verses from “Walking on my Feet” (Fairburn was an inveterate walker for practically all of his life) –

I know where I’m going
where I’ll lie down
nice quiet place
Long way from town

long way to go
I’ll sleep all alone
fingers round the earth
earth round the bone…

The simple directness of such writing is disarming, though not characteristic, as readers of Fairburn’s other poetry will know – but the willingness to engage with the isolation and earthiness of the land heightens the appropriateness of the new recording’s use of the poet’s name, as it does with much of the music we hear.


                                                                                                                                                            A.R.D (Rex) Fairburn

Rather more poetically evocative in terms of imagery and feeling (and according more readily with some of the music found on these recordings) are these lines from a later poem “Estuary” –

The wind has died, no motion now
in the summer’s sleepy breath. Silver the sea-grass
the shells and the driftwood,
fixed in the moon’s vast crystal.

The lynch-pin of this latest undertaking has been pianist Dr. Jian Liu who’s currently both the Head of Piano Studies at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, and the Acting Head of School at the NZSM, and is widely celebrated both as a performer and music educator. The recording was in fact produced by Dr.Liu in conjunction with sound engineer Graham Kennedy at the New Zealand School of Music’s Adam Concert Room, with help from the New Zealand Music Trust and Rattle Records. Funding for the project came from Creative New Zealand in conjunction with Victoria University of Wellington and SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music, and from the New Zealand Music Trust itself. The recordings complement an earlier undertaking involving the publication in China of two volumes containing these same piano works by the Shanghai Music Publishing House, the largest classical music publisher in Asia.

                                                                                                  Dr. Jian Liu

I did express some surprise to Jian Liu at the omission of any of Douglas Lilburn’s piano music from the set – however, because of difficulties in securing copyright from the Lilburn Estate to publish any of the composer’s pieces in China, it was decided to maintain the accord between the publication of the music and these recordings. Of course Lilburn’s spirit is still a “presence” far beyond the single actual reference to him found in Jenny McLeod’s Tone Clock Piece X – “for Douglas on his 80th birthday”. It’s Interesting that Fairburn himself was well aware of Lilburn as a composer, and in fact they corresponded regarding the possibility of Lilburn setting some of Fairburn’s poetry, with the composer suggesting that the “shorter, simpler poems” (such as the aforementioned “Walking on my Feet”) would be best for such a purpose (Denys Trussell “Fairburn” Auckland University Press 1984 Pg.212) – alas that it was an idea that never bore fruit.

Still, these might-have-been conjectures have their own separate life; and Lilburn’s piano music has certainly received its due on disc already through the stellar efforts of interpreters like Margaret Nielsen, Dan Poynton and Michael Houstoun over the years. It’s entirely appropriate that this new set of recordings should be a world unto itself, one in which the compelling uniqueness of the music’s character is honed by the incredibly-focused commitment towards and identification with the music on the part of Jian Liu. And completing the picture is the brilliance, clarity and atmosphere of sound engineer Graham Kennedy’s recording. The three discs together constitute an overall programme whose structure sustains listening interest through both consistency and contrast. Jian Liu himself indicates in the booklet notes that each disc represents “increasing levels of technical difficulty and musical complexity”, providing new and interesting repertoire choices for pianists in different spheres of activity.

Disc One reflects the possibilities for pianists wishing to begin such a journey – and there ‘s a kind of chronology present as well in the process which adds to the flavour of things with names like Warwick Braithwaite, Thomas Haig, Gordon McBeth, Harry Hiscocks, Ernest Jenner, and Paul Schramm, all of whom were born in the nineteenth century. There’s a definite period charm about Warwick Braithwaite’s Fragment, Gordon McBeth’s An Idyll,  Harry Hiscocks’ Nocturne, and Ernest Jenner’s Foxglove Bells – and both Thomas Haigh’s deliciously glutinous-sounding Rotorua (Boiling Mud Pools) with its accompanying touches of gothic atmosphere, and Paul Schramm’s What a Silly Joke with its knockabout comedy routine are all evocatively presented by Liu’s ever-prevailing sense of time, place and character in the music.

On the same disc one finds contemporary composers exploring these same charming, fragrant, atmospheric, and pictorial evocations – though there’s insufficient space to comment on every individual piece one still responds to Ronald Tremain’s artlessly attractive Sleigh Ride, and Claire Cowan’s more exploratory Paper Dragonfly, and with extension of the rich variety of keyboard textures provided by David Hamilton’s Clouds over Aoraki and Gillian Whitehead’s Outlines Through Rising Mists. Gareth Farr’s Love Songs and Anthony Ritchie’s Caroline Bay Suite set simple but satisfying rhythmic challenges of ostinato and syncopation.

The remainder of pieces on the disc take the player to more demanding levels of achievement both technically and interpretatively with Jenny McLeod’s Mysterious Whirly Square Dance providing a stimulating test for any beginning player, and Paul Schramm’s already-mentioned What a Silly Joke even more so.  Gillian Whitehead’s Lullaby for Matthew and Craig Utting’s Covenant have more reachable notes but inhabit worlds which require an advanced synthesis of hands head and heart. And so to John Elmsly’s Six Little Preludes which conclude the first disc and which in Jian Liu’s hands definitely represents a kind of technical and aesthetic gateway through which a player needs to pass to tackle the demands of the “next level” of keyboard accomplishment.

Straight away one senses a more elevated world of expression with the beginning of Disc Two, and one to which the pianist instantly responds, firstly with Kenneth Young’s Elusive Dream, a series of spontaneously-wrought roulades becoming increasingly interactive as their explorations flirt with both expectation and illusion – a kind of “growing-up” metaphor, an awakening to a new reality. Liu adroitly enables David Farquar’s Three Inventions to playfully lock horns with one another before coming to a kind of “rubbed-off-edges” terms with themselves, while Ross Harris’s utterly charming Nga Manu delineates by numbers the birth processes of birds from incubation, through hatching and feeding and pushing out fledglings, including a somewhat pitiful “runt of the litter”.  Leonie Holmes’s Nocturne comes with a poem describing the flight of a moth, the sounds, Liu perfectly realising Holmes’s fine detailing expressing the creature’s “Midnight Empress” status and her “unchallenged” sweep into and through her “hushed domain”. And just as majestic in a different, “other time and place” manner is Michael Williams’s Arteria Meridionali, whose ritualistic, almost Respighi-like gestures seem to evoke something of their European origins.

It was simply my way of thinking about things, but Anthony Ritchie’s grandly-conceived Olveston Suite, a tribute to an historic Dunedin stately home, seems to mark the end of the set’s “coming of age” evocations, the “grand gesture-like” sounds nostalgically reawakening my youthful impressions of such places with their faded glories and echoes of old times. Everything here seemed like a newly-minted dream with lots of rumbustion (The Kitchen and Scullery – as well as, surprisingly, the Billiard Room!), proper old-world etiquette (the Dining Room) and some genteel tranquility (the Writing Room), all part of the fairy-tale-like fantasy of a lost age.

After this, I felt the remaining works on the disc, Jenny McLeod’s Four Tone Clock pieces and Anthony Ritchie’s selection of PIano Preludes, possessed a gravitas which lifted them away from the other pieces, more akin to the collection of works on Disc Three. All of the pieces had that depth of content, either focused or discursive, which required the kind of responses to technical difficulty and/or musical complexity as outlined by Jian Liu in his introduction to the set.

McLeod’s Tone Clock pieces were inspired by Dutch composer Peter Schat’s theories regarding equal-temperament tonal and chromatic approaches, expanding Schat’s basic idea to incorporate what she called a “Grand Unified Theory” far beyond the idea’s original source. Liu plays four of McLeod’s twenty-four pieces, two of which are each dedicated to previous composer-colleagues of Mcleod – Douglas Lilburn and David Farquhar – both of whom had preceded her as Professors of Music Studies at Victoria University. I imagined I could “hear” certain characteristics of each of the older composers in the pieces McLeod had inscribed to them.

While more conventionally named as “Preludes”, Anthony Ritchie’s survey for solo piano encompasses the accepted spectrum of all twenty-four keys from the chromatic scale. Jian Liu recorded five of these for this recording, covering a wide range of differing “character” pieces, influenced to some extent by other composers’ efforts in this form but remaining true to the composer’s own “sound and musical expression”. Each has a particular distinctive character which Liu brings out with splendid-sounding surety – I particularly enjoyed the contrasts in his playing of No. 15, with its agitated, excitingly “dangerous-sounding” figurations vying with bell-like treble sounds, dismissed mockingly and derisively, when compared with No. 24 (subtitled “For my Mother”), a time-aged memory of mother and child at the keyboard perhaps? – something at first charming and nostalgic, though at the end, sounding a strangely forlorn note…..

True to Jian Liu’s previously-quoted overview, the two previous pieces and those occupying Disc Three all seemed ineluctably “ingrained” in terms of conveying a character, environment, situation, emotion or any other such viewpoint relating to this part of the world with requisite skill and conviction. Two of the third disc’s pieces were by composers whose music was appearing for the first time in this set – interestingly one was the oldest in the group (Edwin Carr 1928-2003) and the other was the youngest (Selina Fisher (b.1993) – beside which we heard further works by David Hamilton, John Psathas, Gareth Farr, Gillian Whitehead, Claire Cowan and John Elmsly.

Whether it was the juxtaposition of youth and age, or the “newness” of the two composers’ music on this disc, I found myself unexpectedly, but more resoundingly, drawn to both Edwin Carr’s and Salina Fisher’s very different sounding works. Carr composed prolifically in most forms, including a number of works for solo piano, among them this attractively-varied set of four sharply-characterised pieces requiring from the player, by turns, both a lyrical touch and brilliant virtuosity. By contrast Selina Fisher’s world is more readily ambient and impressionistic, though capable of sharply-etched incident and irruption, however micro-cosmic. Both of these pieces would certainly encourage me to seek out further explorations and expressions of the world of sound, light and ambience through which we all move and deign to share with others. It‘s a kind of overall unifying quality which all of the pieces on these three discs so brilliantly and evocatively presented here by Jian Liu have a share in defining and characterising as our very own distinctive living-space.

Henry Wong Doe, and a paean in praise of piano recitals…….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

     Wellington Chamber Music presents :
HENRY WONG DOE – Piano Recital

FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – Sonata in E Minor Hob.XVI:34 (1784)
LEONIE HOLMES – Time Rustling for piano and fixed media electronics (2023)
ALBERTO GINASTERA – Piano Sonata No. 1 Op.22 (1952)
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN – Nocturne in D flat Major Op.27 No.2 (1836)
MODEST MUSORGSKY – Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)

Sunday 21st July 2024
St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Welliongton

Consider, reader, if you will, the piano recital – a presentation involving a single musician playing on an instrument which has inspired some of the greatest, most profound and far-reaching musical compositions ever devised by human beings within the framework of Western civilisation.

The classical repertoire alone for pianists seems boundless, including sounds associated with early keyboards and gradually evolving over centuries to the majestic tones wrought by today’s concert grands – instruments capable of reproducing near-orchestral swathes of tones and timbres which give multifarious tongue to all kinds of compositions, both original and transcribed from any era or alternative sound-source. And the music written for a single player and instrument alone is itself so richly-extensive as to commandeer a lifetime’s attention and satisfaction.

Which leads me to pose the question – WHY is it that the piano recital itself has seemed of recent times to have lost some of its former frequency, or currency, or status, or allure, or more to the point, NECESSITY in the music programmes of various organisations?

Time was in Wellington, for example, when every international piano soloist (or guest instrumentalist or singer) who appeared with the NZSO gave a solo recital as well. Quite apart from the stellar line-up which I “missed out” on seeing over the years (including luminaries like Claudio Arrau, Annie Fisher, John Ogdon and Tamas Vasary), I WAS fortunate enough to hear in the 1970s and 80s artists such as Alfred Brendel (an all-Beethoven programme), Vladimir Ashkenazy (Mozart and Chopin), Alicia de Larrocha (an extraordinary all-Spanish recital), Peter Frankl (Chopin),  Jorge Bolet (Schumann, Grieg and Liszt) and Stephen Hough (Schubert), in recital in the Town Hall playing music that seemed their “meat-and-drink” when compared with the fast-food popularity of the “standard” piano concerto repertoire they also performed with the orchestra.

Now I love piano concertos – don’t get me wrong, here! – who wouldn’t want to hear those works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Saint-Saens, and Ravel, played by a world-class pianist? – It’s just that piano concertos represent a one-sided aspect of pianism when set against the solo repertoire that’s just as much their and our heritage. And it’s a heritage we concertgoers in t  his part of the world are being deprived of.

Such a loss was underlined in spectacular fashion last weekend at a Wellington Chamber Music Concert which featured a magnificently-played solo recital by Auckland-born pianist Henry Wong Doe, who’s back home in New Zealand to visit family and take some time out from his current duties as Professor of Piano at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I had not long ago reviewed Wong Doe’s most recent recording for Rattle Records of one of today’s recital’s “jewels”,  Musorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” –  https://middle-c.org/2018/02/two-resounding-recordings-from-rattle-classics-and-a-feisty-newcomer/ – so I was interested to have the chance to compare my impressions of the two readings.

While the CD enterprisingly linked the Musorgsky with another work inspired by pieces of art, New Zealand composer Eve de Castro Robinson’s, fantastically-wrought “A zigzagged gaze”, Wong Doe included at today’s St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace recital, a work by Aucklander Leonie Holmes, Time Rustling, for piano and fixed media electronics. This had been one of six works commissioned by the pianist from different Kiwi composers living both in New Zealand and in places around the world in 2022, Wong Doe inviting them to write pieces illustrating their experiences and perspectives during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Otherwise the programme was a kind of compendium of the recitalist’s art, with works from the classical, romantic and twentieth-century eras, one which could be simplistically described as a “something for everybody” presentation, but whose essence expressed much more than any such glib kind of prospectus – each piece had its own “attitude” and special character in its own right.

Take the Haydn E Minor Sonata Hob.XVI:34 which opened the recital, for instance – the first movement so intriguingly equivocal at the beginning, the pianist’s upward arpeggios quizzical and questioning, and with “full stops” at the ends of some of the sequences – what might Haydn have been thinking? – Wong Doe generates moments of volatility to the discourse, contrasting dynamic levels and places where the horse seems to be momentarily given its head before being reined in,  sounding in places not unlike a young Beethoven, but ultimately with more circumspection than certainty, especially at the movement’s end.

The slow movement sounded vocal-like from the outset, the line florid and decorative. The middle section explored both minor and major key changes before returning to the opening, Wong Doe’s agile fingers making the lines seem like embellishments of themselves, steering the music towards the final movement’s darker territories without a break. He then spurted into the finale’s Vivace molto with a will, presenting incredibly quicksilvery fingerwork, relying on velocity and brilliance for effect and playing down the opportunities for variety of touch and droll humour that a slightly more varied  tempo would have given – still, the effect was undeniably exhilarating!

After this came the Leonie Holmes work, part of the pianist’s “Perspectives 2022” project referred to above, and which Wong Doe recorded for Rattle Records on RAT D147 2023  (see this review’s heading). This was one of two pieces from the set whose composers used electronic sounds in their work (Leila Adu-Gilmore’s work “Home” was the other), the remainder being entirely for acoustic solo piano and player.

I’ve always liked the unvarnished honesty of Leonie Holmes’s work, the most recent one I’ve heard being an orchestral piece “I watched a shadow” premiered by the NZSO on consecutive nights (May 17/18th) in Auckland and Wellington. I thought Holmes’s work on that occasion easily out-grew its inspiration, a friend’s somewhat homespun poem, the resulting orchestral rhapsody convincingly conveying an austere soundscape undergoing what seemed as much oceanic as tectonic forces at work, enlivened by ebb-and-flow wind-and-brass irruptions.

Here, by comparison, the stimulus originated more from within, a meditation upon time characterised strongly by the isolation of the Covid-19 era. Holmes wanted to “grow the piece” via the “strange ways” of time by refracting her initial sketches of memories of the sounds of wind rustling through the branches of trees through an electronic media, then mixing the later piano timbres with these earlier memories.

Beginning with electronics whose sounds resembled a chord which burgeoned and refracted, the piano responded with gently-voiced melancholic tones., the combination sometimes augmenting or taking turns with one another – a tolling-bell sequence mirrored, then drifted apart, while the tape’s rumbling, sighing ambiences prompted low, murmuring chordal utterances from the piano, Bartokian chords growing into scherzando-like animations. As the intensities faded, gentler Debussian piano sounds took over– gentle pin-pricks of sound-light gradually bade those beautifully ambient chords a farewell.

Next we heard a starkly contrasting piece, Alberto Ginastera’s First Piano Sonata, a tribute by the composer to the folk rhythms of his native country, Argentina, and producing a coruscating display of keyboard physicality from the pianist. As well as their South American flavour, the themes had a Prokofiev-like energy and piquancy with the music’s more lyrical moments of the music framed in toccata-like trajectories which kept the listener’s blood pulsating right up to the coruscating repeated-note onslaughts of the movement’s final flourishes.

This was followed by a presto misterioso second movement, setting sinister “whirling dervish” textures against breathlessly-repeated toccata-like sequences. Wong Doe’s feathery brilliance conjured up something of a nightmarish soundscape traversal which disappeared at the end as eerily and wraith-like as it had begun. What a contrast with the slow movement’s building from the silences a series of quietly expressive “figures” their immobility imbued with portentous mute intention, before opening up and giving tongue in agitated tones. After a climax the sounds seemed to withdraw into themselves once again as mysteriously as before.

Suddenly the finale’s “ruvido ed ostinato” erupted, joyously and frenetically under Wong Doe’s fingers, the dance-like rhythms whirling all of us along on a growing tide of energy and exuberance,  animating those infectious-sounding folk-melodies beloved of the composer  – the whole movement represented an irresistible bubbling-up of exhilaration towards a final, volcanic surge of energy from the pianist up and down the keyboard. It was Incredible stuff, bringing some people to their feet, and leaving others like myself too gobsmacked to do little more that applaud as if in a daze!

After some of us had “talked among ourselves” over the interval and calmed down, we were ready for the second half, beginning with a Chopin Nocturne, and concluding with Musorgsky’s famous “Pictures”. The Chopin work, in D-flat major Op.27 No. 2, was one of a “pair”, which the composer was fond of crafting with these works. This one, in contrast with the more turbulent No. 1, was more consistently song-like throughout, a mini-crescendo of excitement apart in the middle section of the work (very operatic-like, and betraying the composer’s fondness for the voice.)

Wong Doe charmed us with this, beautifully demonstrating to us the well-known description of  “Chopin rubato” – the leaves of the tree are being blown every which way by the wind, but the trunks remain solid and keep strictly in time.

I hadn’t heard Wong Doe’s recording of the Musorgsky for a while, and thought I’d prefer to encounter it afresh, in any case – at the start I thought the gestures suitably invigorating and virile, presenting a composer who, rather than bowed by grief at the loss of his artist friend, Victor Hartmann, seemed determined to do his memory justice via the inspiration given to him by the artist’s pictures.

While making the most of the contrast the cycle afforded, Wong Doe didn’t go into “Horowitz territory” in terms of over-orchestrating the different subjects – The Gnome, for instance he played hard-and-fast, carrying over some of the opening promenade energies without a pause or break,  and emphasising the creature’s malevolence. The Old Castle evoked the Troubadour, but not so much his song as his playing, as also with the caprice and playfulness of the children in Tuileries. But Bydlo (The Ox Cart) was here superb, massive and relentless at the climax, and with its decrescendo given all kinds of variants of tone and colour. The Ballet Of Unhatched Chicks then properly enchanted, while the two Jews, Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle were brilliantly operatic in their interactions.

I enjoyed the delightful garrulity of the Marketplace at Limoges, here contrasted stunningly with the eerie Catacombs – suddenly we could scarcely dare to breathe in between those massive chords and their silences! I also remember the almost Lisztian transcendence of the Cum Linguis in Lingua Mortua (Musorgsky’s own schoolboy Latin!) and the lump-in-throat effect Wong Doe’s playing had, both here and in his recording.

Baba Yaga was simply breathtakingly done with almost blindingly brilliant finger-work, with the central part’s eeriness and menace strongly drawn! Some pianists hold back with the introduction of the Great Gate of Kiev theme, as if hearing it from a distance the first time (which I quite like), but Wong Doe gave it his all straight away! Both the succeeding priest’s hymn and the massive bell strokes were begun softly, but the re-entry of the Promenade theme caught us up in its growing excitement until it all seemed nothing but great festive bell sounds, a ceremony as all-embracingly spacious and reverberant as one could want at the end.

I wish I’d taken more notice of the Gareth Farr encore, whose name I don’t even remember, such were the resonances still playing in my head from the Musorgsky! I remember soft, tolling bell sounds, with rhythms beginning to bubble and shimmer, while underpinned by deeper, richer sounds, until the shimmering textures reached a bubbling-over point, after which everything gradually receded, and calm was restored again. Someone who had kept his or her head better at this point might well be able to add to this somewhat distracted account of mine with more information – I was still wandering in my head, lost somewhere in Kiev, in thrall to those sounds that had made the afternoon’s piano recital such an enthralling experience……

Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei – legacy of The Classical Style

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington Music Director, Marc Taddei – photo credit: Latitude Creative

SERGE PROKOFIEV – Symphony No. 1 “Classical”  Op.25
GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE – Piano Concerto (1924)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Symphony No. 9 in D Minor “Choral” Op. 125

Somi Kim (piano)
Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano),
Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor), Robert Tucker (baritone)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 6th June 2024

Orchestra Wellington’s visionary and compelling 2024 survey of concert music and some of its significant milestones certainly lived up to expectations with “The Classical Style”, a most attractive and “something for everybody” selection highlighting pieces whose composers took their inspiration from classical forms through which they were able to refract their own individuality and distinctive voices.

The highlight of the evening for me was undoubtedly the Piano Concerto by the French composer Germaine Tailleferre, a beautifully luminous and engaging piece whose relative neglect until recent times I find difficult to fathom on the strength of pianist Somi Kim’s sonorous, attractive playing and Orchestra Wellington’s gorgeously sinuous accompaniments. Also, framing this work were two far better-known but still ineffably fascinating pieces by Prokofiev and Beethoven whose “add water” appeal would have nicely eased audiences into Tailleferre’s relatively unchartered territories.

Before the concert began, maestro extraordinaire Marc Taddei took the liberty of using the occasion to promote an important new recording project involving the orchestra and himself, one paying tribute to the music of a composer whose work Taddei and the Orchestra have valiantly supported over the years, New-Zealand-Greek composer John Psathas, (born in Wellington, in 1966, to Greek parents). This is a recently-recorded two-disc (both vinyl and CD) set on the Atoll label titled “Leviathan” containing four concerti, three for percussion and one for tenor sax. (“Leviathan” is, of course the title of one of the percussion concertos). With the help of concertmaster Amalia Hall, Taddei displayed the LP set with its stunningly-contrasted coloured vinyl (one disc white and the other blue), all with the kind of “fatal attraction” allure that a vinyl-collector like myself would find impossible to resist – as with the orchestra’s previous unmissable recording project involving two Beethoven symphonies to which, of course , I readily succumbed! If this paragraph sounds like an advertisement, it’s because I simply can’t help myself at this point! – so, back to the concert! (see the conclusion of this review for details regarding the recording’s availability)….

Where was I? – Oh, yes! – one finds it difficult to think of a better choice to begin such an evening as we had scheduled than with Prokofiev’s self-proclaiming “Classical” Symphony, and in a performance which, for three of the four movements seemed to me to attain an “ideal” regarding the ever-tantalising balance in performance between surface execution and feeling.  The opening movement properly launched itself upwards with great gusto, but with enough ‘wriggle-room” for the momentums to generate the piece’s infectious eagerness while allowing a flexibility of movement between the different themes.

The adorable slow movement was by turns tender, limpid, forthright and glowing – I particularly enjoyed the enticing “lift” to the triplet rhythms that accompanying a later reprise of the principal theme, and the quiet dignity with which it all ended. The Minuet I also found utterly charming, Marc Taddei allowing his players enough “expression” in their exchanges to reinforce the idea that these were real dancers, rather than simply marionettes going through the motions. After these delights I thought the finale a tad too hasty, to my mind exchanging some of the music’s deliciousness for the sake of sheer brilliance (though the orchestra certainly rose to the occasion, the wind players in particular performing miracles of fingering and tongueing in keeping up the tempo!).

French composer Germaine Tailleferre has until relatively recently been known by the musical world at large merely for her membership of the French group of composers named “Les Six”, and for little else, a similar fate to two other group members, Louis Durey and Georges Auric. Tailleferre, who had distinguished herself as a pupil at the Paris Conservatoire, and who received further encouragement from both Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel, became a member of “Les Six” in 1920. She composed a great deal during the 1920s and 30s, much of which was lost during World War Two after she had fled France for the United States – her creative output continued after her return to France up until her death in 1983, by which time she had produced almost two hundred finished works. Her 1924 Piano Concerto survived the war, becoming one of several concertante works she completed, including a Second Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto, a Double Piano Concerto and a Double Guitar Concerto!

Somi Kim, piano, plays Germaine Tailleferre’s 1924  Piano Concerto with Orchestra Wellington – photo credit: Latitude Creative

Though not a long work the Piano Concerto features the piano playing practically without a break, a task which the soloist Somi Kim undertook sporting a sparklingly eye-catching dress which seemed to visually echo the music’s constantly effervescing glitter throughout the three movements, and especially in the outer ones, with coruscations continually flying off in all directions!

The first movement, in lively, quick-march tempo, straightaway engendered a sense of a festive occasion, with music that seemed to be purposefully “on the move” somewhere, the playing beautifully gradated by both pianist and orchestra to a similar objective, whatever the orchestrations and however discursive the key-changes. Throughout, I was put in mind of JS Bach’s First and Third Brandenburg Concerti with their constant sprinklings of instrumentation channelled towards both the act of interchange and the establishment of a kind of overall “understanding” between the participants as a desirable and complementary process, rather than any kind of duel or contest.

The slow movement seemed the emotional “heart” of the work, with Somi Kim’s piano solo seamlessly enhanced by the winds, and Marc Taddei enjoining the strings to make the most of an ongoing sinuousness melody. The ensuing tutti took it up, buttressed by rich chordings from the piano and further warmed by a sappy trumpet solo – so much achieved, I thought, with relatively simple means! A warm-hearted oboe solo then gave way to a “worrisome” flute, bringing a forlorn note to the proceedings before the movement’ concluding surprise – a remarkably haunting and certainly unexpected modulation to distant realms right at the end!

I enjoyed the ambivalence of the finale’s opening rhythm, my ear jumping to and from different numbers of beats to the bar as the music’s trajectories evolved, keeping me guessing in delicious-sounding ways. Again, It’s all more of a concertante work than a concerto, really, a true partnership in the baroque/classical manner, rather than any kind of contest between soloist and orchestra – Kim and Taddei dovetailed their piano and orchestral parts splendidly throughout, and the solo cadenza near the end gave the pianist the chance to “sound out” a couple of beautiful church-bell-like cascades before the solo trumpet invited the rest of the orchestra back into the discourse for the work’s coda, one not unlike a gentler, more urbane version of the final bars of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, with its prominent solo trumpet part! Certainly, I felt,  a work to get to know better.

Somi Kim responded to the warm audience applause at the end with a lithe, nimble-fingered encore rendition of the well-known Rondo a la Turca from Mozart’s Piano Sonata K.311. I would have enjoyed as much her playing something by Poulenc or Satie or even Ravel, if only to keep up Gallic appearances, but the audience obviously loved it – so c’est bon!

After the interval, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony might have seemed “le deluge”-like at such a concert – it was, after all, the nineteenth’s century’s most influential symphony with even its “number” becoming an insuperable burden for at least seven subsequent symphonists I know of who ventured into those same numerical realms and faltered – Schubert, Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler, Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold and Roger Sessions. Marc Taddei further stressed the significance of Beethoven’s work by talking about the composer’s simultaneous adherence to tradition (four contrasting movements, including a sonata-form opening movement, a scherzo and a slow movement) AND to the work’s ground-breaking aspects (the work’s epic length, and with a symphonic finale like no other with vocal soloists and choir!) So the work epitomised a composer’s knowledge, experience, use and further develop of this creative ethos called “The Classical Style” like no other had done up to this time.

As I’d found with his conducting of the “classics” occasionally in the past I found Marc Taddei’s very direct and at times to my ears more-than-usually brusque approach to Beethoven’s opening movement of the Ninth Symphony hard to get in accord with at first – I’d always thought of Beethoven’s opening movement as having a rugged epic grandeur which explodes in places with excitement – but Taddei’s “never-let-up” tempo made the whole movement seethe with barely-contained energy, exciting in its way, but hardly with a “epic” quality.  I thought the famously seismic “middle section” of the movement, for instance, didn’t have the sheer impact I was accustomed to feeling because much of the rest of the movement had already been given so agitated a character. It certainly made me rethink what Beethoven himself might have been after – something less monumental and more kinetic and volatile, which Taddei and his players certainly put across with few holds barred and with such elan and brilliance! I did come to the end of the movement thinking “Golly! It’s over, already!” having lived for so long with more colossal-sounding traversals. This one was, for me, quite a wake-up call, and certainly an ear-opening experience!

I could far more readily equate with Taddei’s treatment of the Scherzo, the opening biting and incisive, the timpani blows galvanising and the rhythms spot-on throughout – the movement’s  compelling amalgam of high spirits and restlessness was put across with incredible panache, both in an ensemble and individual sense – the timpani’s almost visceral attack was exhilarating, and the wind-and brass playing throughout the Trio sections were a joy to listen to! And I did appreciate the repeats, enabling us to enjoy that feeling of physical excitement and exhilaration for much of the piece all over again!

As with the first movement I took a bit of getting used to the quicker pulsings of the slow movement, again wanting a longer-breathed, more “epic” quality to prevail, something which, as my own rhythms “caught up” with the conductor’s, I increasingly enjoyed as the movement progressed, Taddei actually allowing the strings enough space for their phrases to bloom,  and the lines to sing. The sequence with the winds and the solo horn took on a lovely glow in places (the latter player’s brief solo flourish was gorgeous!). And though I again felt the triplet variation section was overly pushed along, it was given a charm of its own by the superb playing. I didn’t like the excessively staccato treatment of the great fanfares, wanting them to have more of a “resounding” character in those celestial spaces hovering around and about the notes. In all, the movement certainly sounded beautiful playing-wise, even if I felt my listener’s usual “transfigured”  sense of feeling  in this music thwarted by its quicker-than usual pace…..

Soloists Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn, (mezzo-soprano), Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor) and Robert Tucker (baritone), with the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, Orchestra Wellington, and Music Director Marc Taddei –  Photo credit: Latitude Creative

And so to the finale! – what a magnificent “horror chord” opening utterance we got, straightaway! The recitatives then jumped out of their blocks quickly, perhaps with not enough weight to convey firstly their disapproval (instrumental versions of “O Freunde. nicht diese töne!” – O friends, not these sounds!) and then their exultation when the “Ode to Joy” melody finally appears (“O Freunde, freuden vollere!” – O friends, more joyful ones!). The orchestral basses were INCREDIBLY quiet at the beginning of their “Ode to Joy” theme, while the strings and winds partnered really well for their verses, and the brasses were simply magnificent in their utterances!

A second “horror” chord introduced the soloists – and Robert Tucker made a tremendous initial impression with his recitative, though less so with his verse, the line being low for his voice – I suddenly felt that the soloists perhaps ought to have been at the front with the conductor, and not behind the orchestra – surely Beethoven wanted them to be heard, and not just as solo choral voices! I was surprised when I realised that Margaret Medlyn was singing the alto part, and not Melissa Crennan, as per programme (I was told later that the latter had fallen ill). Generally the soloists were audible, though soprano Emma Pearson’s clear, bell-like tones stood out from the rest. The Orpheus Choir were the real heroes – great shouts of “Vor Gott” (Before God) ushered in the tenor solo, (Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono), though he was hampered by the trajectories disappointingly sped up and the rhythms flattened out, leaving him almost no swagger in his step, and little room for any real heroic timbre in his voice!

I wondered why the horns sounded here as if they were “joining” their pairs of repeated notes in the brief introduction to the choir’s reprise of “Freunde, schöner Gotterfunken” (they WERE playing very softly)…..the latter was splendidly done, as was the whole “Seid umschunglen, Millionem” (Oh, you millions, I embrace you!), during which sequence I at last got a real “cosmic” sense from the music, thanks to the “space” accorded the singers by the conductor, expressing the moment’s mystical and epic gravity. Perhaps the Orpheus’s most splendid moment was the great Choral Fugue “Seid umschunglen, Millionem” which then followed, the voices and orchestral brass achieving real grandeur together!

The solo quartet’s “moment of truth” came at the end of the sequence with the choir at “Freude, Tochter aus Elysium”  (Joy, Daughter from Elysium), and the “Alle menschen werde Bruder” (All men shall be Brothers) sequence, where the soloists individually rhapsodised over the words, raptly concluding with a high B-flat from soprano Emma Pearson – nicely, if a wee bit circumspectly rounded off! Then it was the famous final presto sequence, choir and soloists intoxicated with joyful feeling and racing to the work’s conclusion, with the orchestra having the final riotous say!

Away with the perfidy of critics! – all were heroes, singers, choristers, players, conductor! – and all were enthusiastically and resoundingly applauded, and the magnitude of their achievements, singly and corporately,  given their just dues. I babbled about the performance highlights afterwards to anybody nearby who would listen, and gleaned from the exchanges that those present absolutely revelled in what they’d just heard, drunk with those copious dollops of “Freude, schöner Gotterfunken”, given to humankind as a gift for the ages.

An exuberant ‘Cello-and-Piano concert from Robert Ibell and Rachel Thomson

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Robert Ibell (‘cello) and Rachel Thomson (piano)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Sonata for Piano & Cello in D major, Op 102 No 2
LEOŠ JANÁČEK – Pohádka (Fairytale)
CLAUDE DEBUSSY – Sonata for Cello & Piano
ALEX TAYLOR – Four Little Pieces
ZOLTÁN KODÁLY – Sonata for Cello & Piano Op 4
ROBERT SCHUMANN – Fantasy Pieces Op 73

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 12th May, 2024

I confess to being tempted to describe this as a well-nigh perfect programme at the concert’s conclusion, except that such fulsome statements are obviously subjective, and have a well-used ring about them when applied to any such compilations, let alone of the “reviewing” kind!

Let me say instead that I found the programme extraordinarily satisfying as such – and this is not to mention the commitment and skill with which the two musicians involved brought to the occasion, though they would obviously have influenced such a judgement.

A reliable measure of the impact made upon audience sensibilities at any concert is the degree of animated conversation that follows the applause – and I found myself almost straightaway afterwards talking with each of my neighbours in turn seated on either side (neither of whom I knew at all, beforehand!), with all of us eager to convey how much we had enjoyed this and that and wanting the other’s response to the same. So, this concert certainly passed the “animated audience response” test with flying colours!

One of the pieces was completely new to me (Alex Taylor’s Four Little Pieces), and another two I’d had to familiarize myself with by finding recordings before going to the concert (Leoš Janáček’s Pohádka (Fairytale) and Zoltán Kodály’s Sonata for Cello & Piano Op 4) – all of which put me in a kind of half-and-half “knew/didn’t know” situation regarding the content, the kind of thing that can put one on one’s mettle as a listener good and proper! I was lucky that I didn’t find myself “overwhelmed” by too many new things – it gave my ears different things to do with the two halves of the programme!

First up was the Beethoven, the fifth and last of the composer’s ‘Cello Sonatas, works that revolutionised the repertoire for the instrument by completely reworking the relationship between cello and keyboard – previously a mere supporting instrument in any ensemble, here the ‘cello was clearly made an equal partner with the piano. Though the two early Op.5 Sonatas were still described as “with a violincello obbligato” the cello parts were through-composed, each having its own voice, something never before attempted. Beethoven was to give the new form its fully-fledged status in the two Op.102 Sonatas.

Rachel Thomson exuberantly sounded the opening piano figure, beginning the lovely give-and-take exchanges that characterised this movement, with its charming contrasts between lyrical expression and forthright con brio manner. Both players observed a judicious balance between the two instruments, with Robert Ibell’s tones readily encompassing the forthright and more lyrical aspects of the music’s lines. The players fully realised the opening solemnity of the central Adagio, the sounds “breathing” as if shared by a single instrument, the con molto sentiment d’affeto direction allowing plenty of expressive freedom, such as in the transitions which moved the music between different intensities – especially lovely! Which of course, made the concluding fugue Allegro even more fun, not so much a narrative as an encapsulation of changing moods, spontaneous and visceral in places, quixotic and playful in others – all so masterful, and all thrown off here with such elan and delight!

Next came a different century’s version of individuality from another master, Leoš Janáček, with his three-movement work for ‘cello and piano Pohádka (Fairytale), a work Janáček, a staunch Russophile, based on a story from a poem by Vasily Zhukovsky which was inspired by Russian folk-lore. Rachel Thomson both enlightened and amused us by reading a droll synopsis beforehand of the work’s original story, written as a programme note by the great cellist Steven Isserlis for one of his concerts.

In three movements, the music tells of the young Tsarevich Prince Ivan and his love for the daughter of Kashchei, the King of the Underworld, the tribulations of the lovers as their plans are seemingly thwarted by magic, and their eventual release from the spell and their eventual happy union. Janáček’s settings are more atmospheric and scene-based than actual narratives, the bardic-like exchanges between piano recitative and ‘cello pizzicato at the very beginning instantly creating a fairy-tale ambience, one in which the urgencies here gradually overwhelmed the music’s lyricism and took hold via driving ostinati as the fearsome underworld King Kashchei pursued the fleeing lovers.

The second movement’s exchanges similarly reflected the hopes and fears of the beleaguered pair, rather than presenting any of the story’s specifics – both Ibell’s cello pizzicato motif and Thomson’s more rhapsodic piano lines vividly “grew” tensions and agitations constantly at the mercy of the fates, eventually reaching a concluding point of suspended unease with a single, resigned piano figure. The finale straightaway had the musicians steadfastedly generating a dancing figure, hopeful, occasionally tinged with anxieties, but eventually subsiding in a kind of glow of contentment, leaving us with the feeling that true love here had actually “made it” over the lovers’ troubles.

Concluding a first half of unfailingly well-wrought musical utterance was Claude Debussy’s 1915 Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano. The composer was determined to celebrate all things French, and especially so at the time of the work’s composition (1915) with the idea to the fore that, in the composer’s words “not even 30 million “boches” can destroy French thought”. The opening Prologue’s introductory piano fanfare, answered by an ardent ‘cello theme, straightaway affirmed the musicians’ commitment to the music’s sound-world, here, with beautiful, wistful exchanges gradually building up archways in places to the composer’s own La Cathedral Engloutie-like sonorities, before the sounds plaintively retreated, leaving in the memory a lovely harmonic-like note from the ‘cello at the end.

If the composer’s earlier solo piano Prelude La serenade interrompue had portrayed something of a thwarted endeavour, this Serenade seemed to engender nothing less than a complete train wreck! Debussy himself strongly objected to one of his interpreters interpolating a commentary characterising the well-known commedia dell’arte character Pierrot in this work, even if the music seems to lend itself to such a programme – the wonderfully quirky and volatile exchanges between the instruments right from the outset pinged our sensibilities and clattered through our receptive chambers! – all so quirky and volatile, with sound-trajectories whose impulses didn’t last, whether pizzicato or arco, staccato or legato, a veritable orgy of indecision or caprice, with only the work’s finale coming to the rescue by breaking the impasse!

After such chronic demarcations of expression the finale here seemed at first to burst out of the music’s shell and flood St.Andrews’s sound vistas with uninhibited energies, the folkish dance melody whirling its notations up and down to great effect. There were still more reflective moments in which one might imagine the by then sick and disillusioned composer feeling he had given his all and venting such inclinations, places where Ibell’s and Thomson’s instruments seemed to, by turns, inwardly lament and even momentarily cry out – but having made such points the players returned the music in rondo-like fashion to the opening dance-like energies, before delivering, in no uncertain terms the work’s final gesture, to suitably appreciative effect among their audience!

Alex Taylor’s highly diverting collection of miniature pieces which began the second half seemed almost over before it had started, as we had very little idea how to differentiate the pieces’ separate characters, especially with each having a German title which one might have worked out without translation given time, but had then been moved along more quickly than did one’s brain! (I “got” the first three titles, I think, but was beaten to the finish-line by the final “rasch”) – so that understanding came hand-in-hand only with the moment when both players leapt to their feet having played the whole set without any discernable breaks! Still, they provided great entertainment.

By contrast, Zoltán Kodály’s Op.4 Sonata which followed drew us into a spacious and meditative sound-world. Originally in three movements, the work was deprived of its original opening by the composer who felt dissatisfied with both his first and yet another, later attempt at an opening, so the sonata was left in its two-movement form. While the beautiful opening ‘cello solo does engender a “slow movement” kind of feeling, it makes a magical opening for a work whose character suggests both the composer’s folk-music researches and the influence of Debussy in its impressionistic colourings. Throughout Ibell and Thomson spun a truly atmospheric dialogue of interchange via the music’s leading/accompanying figures and distinctive instrumental timbres.

The second movement’s spirited folk-dance-like beginning delighted us with its contrasts and volatility, with Rachel Thomson’s fingers all over the keyboard in places, ideally matching Robert Ibell’s trenchant attack and command of dynamic variation – playing which seemed to encompass fully the music’s “no holds barred” expression, as full blooded in places as it was piquant and wistful at the piece’s end – for most of us, a real “discovery”!

More familiar fare was the programme’s last item, the warm-hearted Schumann Fantasy Pieces Op. 73, given here as if it was all second nature to these musicians – everything flowed under their hands with an inevitability the composer would have surely accepted with gratitude and approval. Originally written for clarinet with piano, these pieces eminently suited the darker tones of the ‘cello, and its arguably greater expressive range of colour (note: check to see how many clarinettists are on my Christmas card list!). I particularly loved the last piece’s “accelerated exuberance” with the composer urging the musicians to play faster and faster at the end! We loved it, and I took away from the concert most resoundingly a remark from a friend who delightedly greeted me on the way out with the words, “Golly! -wasn’t that Kodaly really something!” I couldn’t have agreed more…..

Intermezzi from Brahms via Michael Houstoun and Rattle Records

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BRAHMS – Complete Intermezzi for solo piano
Michael Houstoun (piano)
RATTLE Records RAT-D131-2022
Producer : Kenneth Young
Recording Engineer : Steve Garden

This beautifully-appointed Rattle disc’s serial number finishes with the tell-tale date 2022, one which inspires a tale piquantly framed by yours truly as a poor excuse, but one nevertheless linked to positive outcomes. At the time this disc came into my possession I was in hospital recovering from heart surgery; and its frequent playing on my trusty disc-player during my convalescence would definitely have contributed greatly to the restoration of my well-being! Almost two years later, the only less-than-positive association I can think of linking my medical experience with these musical sounds is the time I’ve taken to get back to the disc and write this review!

The music on this recording consists solely of pieces from Brahms’ later piano music, cherry-picking those pieces known as “Intermezzi”. They’re typical examples of the composer’s ever-increasing disinclination towards “display” or “virtuosity” in his piano writing in these later works. On first hearing of the set as a whole I found myself wondering whether the pieces (all with this title which in a very Brahmsian way can be taken to mean “neither one thing nor the other”) would work together as a popular choice for all music-lovers. And then, upon playing the final bracket of those beautiful works taken from Brahms’s Op.119, I remembered all over again that my first-ever Brahms piano recording (a 21st Birthday present!) was of the legendary Richard Farrell playing the whole of the Op.119 set, with three out of the four pieces themselves having the title “Intermezzo”.

This time it was, of course, another New Zealand pianist, Michael Houstoun, bringing those Op.119 pieces to life for me once again, at the conclusion of this remarkable journey. Regarding qualities such as beauty of tone, range of expression, sense of character and depth of feeling I’ve not heard more remarkable or arresting playing from this pianist as here – under his fingers each of the pieces one encounters throughout the disc straightaway proclaims its individuality and sense of purpose to an absorbing degree, inspiring more thoughts and reactions to this music than on previous hearings I for one had bargained for.

On this disc the items are placed in compositional order, beginning with the Intermezzi from Op.79, then by turns Opp. 116, 117, 118 and 119. It’s a sequence that makes sense, particularly as the pieces themselves exhibit a degree of variety along the way that richly rewards the listener. Not all have pure and simple beauty as their raison d’etre – while some ravish, others engage for different reasons, in certain cases exhibiting a quixotic spirit, while others strike a more sombre, and even tragic note. A couple show the influence of Schumann, and one or two contain for this listener foreshadowings of sounds for a later time. In short, the collection as a whole gives up much more than the title of “Intermezzi” might lead one to expect.

The disc’s first item, No. 3 from Brahms’s Op.76, is an enchanting Gracioso (the sounds uncannily predating something as far removed from the composer’s world as Anatole Liadov’s 1893 piece “A Musical Snuff-Box!”), here bright and sparkling at the beginning, then deep and sonorous in the alternating passages. It’s followed by the Schumannesque No.4 from the same set, an Allegretto grazioso whose sombre melody reminded me of the earlier composer’s Fantasiestücke pieces. And with the second of the later Op.117 set pf pieces I was again put in mind of Brahms’ great mentor, Schumann, and his Kreisleriana by this quixotic amalgam of flowing melody and chordal elaboration.

Two of the Op.116 pieces give voice to the composer’s “quixotic” side, the balladic No. 2 in A Minor, with its quasi-portentous opening, its agitated figurations which follow and its return to the seriousness of the opening; followed by a favourite of mine, a piece which refracts a lovely “improvisatory” feeling throughout, so beautifully and patiently caught by the pianist. Then, somewhat curiously, there’s the dotted-rhythmed No.5 in E Minor Andante con grazia ed intimissimo sentimento, (with grace and very intimate feeling) in which Houstoun at a brisker-than usual pace brings out the almost zany angularities of the harmonies rather than the “dreamy” feeling of the piece as described by Clara Schumann.

Then, there are the out-and-out beauties, amongst Brahms most-loved piano pieces, such as Op.117 No.1 in E-flat Major Andante Moderato, and Op.118 No. 2, the latter favoured by soloists as an “encore” to a concerto performance – here, Brahms remarkably uses a similar three note pattern at the outset to Liszt’s in the latter’s “Spozalizio” (from Book 2 of “Annees de Pelerinage”). Brahms of course builds a completely different kind of structure, at the piece’s heart working “backwards” from the original theme by inversion in a remarkably beautiful way. A middle minor-key section is almost a story in itself when the melody is changed most beguilingly to the major for a short while, then reiterates its feeling in the minor key once more – and almost without a break the three-note opening returns, beautifully “integrated “ by Houstoun, and allowed to express its voice with no undue emphasis – a truly fine performance!

And there’s the enigmatic Op.119 selection at the very end, of course, beginning with the group’s dream-like opening Adagio. Brahms here seems to allow his improvisatory instincts full voice, beginning the piece, for example with a single-strand idea filled with wonderment, and then “growing” its capacities so that they permeate throughout the keyboard’s expressive range, And how beautifully and almost artlessly that single idea blossoms and informs the line’s descent towards its destiny, leaving us with as much promise as fulfilment. Houstoun’s playing of this on first hearing sounded from memory to my ears on a par, as I’ve said, with Farrell’s similarly poetic and philosophical approach.

The second piece, Andante un poco agitato, is another wonderful piece, beginning with angst-ridden figurations whose energies grow and build to the point where they tumble over one another – I like Houstoun’s bringing out the almost bardic spreading of the chords at various “pointed” moments, quixotically blending a sense of emotion “felt” and “relayed”, and continuing this feeling right throughout the more agitato passages – and then, how meltingly beautiful he makes the more lyrical, major-key way with the same figurations! The opening is recapitulated, before the coda reintroduces the major-key transformation as a kind of “leave-taking” to the piece as a whole.

Then, with No.3 in C Major, Grazioso e giocoso – well, what a sunny, whimsical and totally ingratiating way to end the recital! – at the outset, Houstoun emphasises the higher chordal right- handed notes rather than the underlying melody, giving the piece more of a “chattering” quality! But like his great Kiwi compatriot before him, Houstoun brings out the piece’s delightfully “knowing” innocence, as if Brahms is here saying “Who, me? – write symphonies?” – an aspect which belies the mastery of the whole, and brings the musical journey to a most satisfying conclusion.

Worlds within and alongside worlds – solo and duo pianists Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon at Waikanae

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in C Minor Op.13 “Pathetique”
LISZT – Petrarch Sonett No.104 “Pace non trovo” (from Annees de Pelerinage – Deuxième année: Italie)
BARTOK – Roumanian Dance Op.8a No. 1
MAHLER (arr. piano duo by Bruno Walter) Symphony No. 1 in D Major “Titan”

Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon –  solo and duo pianists

Waikanae Memorial Hall,

Sunday 11th February, 2024

The enterprising Duo Piano pair of Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon gave a moderately-sized but enthusiastic audience plenty of thrills in the opening programme of the 2024 Waikanae Music Society’s Concert Season, combining a first half of solo piano works with a most enticing novelty, a transcription for piano duet of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony in an arrangement made by one of the composer’s most ardent disciples and greatest interpreters, Bruno Walter.

The music of the Symphony and its performance here were, both for people like myself familiar with the orchestral version, and for those coming to the work for the first time, a revelation, judging from the reaction at the concert’s end of those who sat all around where I was situated – shouts of approval and exhalations of amazement of all kinds abounded, which must have gratified the two by then well-nigh exhausted players who had given their all over the best part of the previous hour!

No less captivating in content and variety was the concert’s first half, in effect a mini-solo recital by Dénes Várjon which featured works by Beethoven, Liszt and Bartok. Spanning over a century of keyboard innovation and romantic expression, Dénes Várjon brought to each of the three pieces a powerhouse technique, a romantic sensibility and a neo-ethnic awareness of rediscovery which underlined both the music’s contemporary and on-going importance and significance.

Though Beethoven’s Op.13 “Pathetique” Sonata would have sounded even more revolutionary to both contemporary and present-day ears if played on an instrument of the composer’s time, Várjon’s delivery of the opening movement splendidly “threw down the gauntlet” to our sensibilities with that wonderfully black-browed opening C Minor chord and their successors – his playing reminded me of the impact I well remember of hearing my first-ever recording, over fifty years ago, of that music played by Paul Badura-Skoda, and being knocked sideways as a result!

I particularly enjoyed the player’s going right back to the music’s Grave opening with the exposition repeat, rather than merely reiterating the allegro, which I’d previously heard only New Zealand pianist Stephen de Pledge do in concert. Something else I thought particularly striking in Várjon’s performance was his “playing” of the silences during the Grave sequences a matter, I felt, of giving the pauses their full resonance, so that each new note was allowed to coalesce in the wake of the previous one. In all, the first movement was splendidly done.

I’m sure that even Frederic Chopin, who had little time for Beethoven’s music, would have been charmed by Várjon’s playing of the beautiful, nocturne-like Adagio cantabile which followed – the player’s touch, while having a finely-sculptured quality still evidenced plenty of variety and pliability, producing a living, breathing sense of line. Then, from the second subject’s wistfulness rose a passionately-wrought archway through which we were heart-stoppingly taken, and then returned to the Adagio, our trajectories a tad enlivened, but reclaiming a dream-like “dying fall’ at the end.

From strength and then sensibility, the music turned to whimsy and caprice in the final movement, with playfulness aplenty between the hands, punctuated by the occasional sforzando – a wonderful “splurge-like” clash of notes at the top of one upward run, all adding to the excitement! Towards the end Várjon’s playing brought the music’s energies almost to boiling-point, with everything suddenly tumbling over and downwards; but no bones were broken, as a quick inspection revealed before a final chortle brought the rumbustion to an end! – all thoroughly engaging and enjoyable!

Franz Liszt set three Sonnets by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch  (Nos. 47, 104 and 123), firstly for voice and piano, and then as solo piano versions in the second suite of his Années de Pélérinage (Years of Pilgrimage) – his Deuxième année: Italie (Second year: Italy). More recent research into the poet’s life and output has renumbered those sonnets differently to that of Liszt’s original titles, with the latter’s “Petrarch Sonnett No.104 – Pace non trovo – appearing as No.134 in some editions that include other “ballades, songs and snatches” by the poet. Whatever the case, Liszt’s treatment of this Sonnet is a masterpiece, whether in, as here, solo piano form, or in other versions for voice and piano.

Whether the impulses were grand and tumultuous or tender and thoughtful, Várjon’s playing of this work vividly encapsulated the composer’s richly varied set of responses to the poet’s heartfelt words, from the impassioned opening – “I find no peace, but for war am not inclined…” -through the gamut of emotion – “Love has me in a prison which he neither opens nor shuts fast….” – to the ending’s eloquent resignation – “…to this state I am come, my lady, because of you….”, the pianist “placing” those exquisite high notes near the end as the work’s true climax, and the remainder being as mere echoings. After hearing this I should have liked to have had him play the whole of the Italian  Deuxième année Book……..

A treat of a different order, however, was in store, with the first of Bartok’s Op.8a Roumanian Dances for solo piano, written (1910) at around the time he was extensively exploring Eastern Europe compiling collections of folk music. This rhapsodic music used native rhythms (a “galumphing’ opening) and themes (bagpipe-like snippets of melody) to launch and establish the piece, with Várjon bringing beautifully into being a central, grandly resonating lyrical section with a wistful epilogue. The dance’s opening returned, this time accelerating to a wilder, more percussive climax with plenty of foot-stamping before a grand peroration presented the main theme once again  – the music then “plays” with the melodic snippets as if someone might be swatting at a buzzing fly which cheekily evades its fate and has the last word! Hugely entertaining!

The Mahler Symphony was of an entirely different order, its many moods and evocations giving tongue to the composer’s famous statement regarding the nature of a symphony – “It is like the world!” he once declared to fellow-composer Jean Sibelius – “It must contain everything!”. Had one little or no idea of the programme of this work one still had sufficient variety of impulse, colour and texture to readily imagine a narrative or grand design over the work’s four movements, themselves further dissected into contrasting sequences which added unceasing interest to the discourse. Várjon and his duo-partner-wife Izabella Simon took us right inside the music’s fantastical world from the very beginning, the opening movement a kind of evocation of nature’s awakening, and (by use of themes used in a previous song-cycle, “Songs of A Wayfarer”) a traveller’s experience of passing through the natural world’s manifold beauties and energetic irruptions, to a joyful and vigorous climax.

Each of the three remaining movements had a very specific character – the second movement’s country-dance atmosphere (known as a “Ländler”) was vigorously portrayed, and further contrasted by a more lyrical Trio, most evocatively realised by the duo pair, while the spookily atmospheric third movement Funeral March (with its minor-key use of the famous “Frere Jacques” theme) here gave me the utmost pleasure, Izabella Simon as the “primo” player beautifully and piquantly bringing out the melodies, their  essences underpinned by her partner’s “secondo” portrayal of the somewhat macabre funeral cortege rhythms. I particularly enjoyed the pair’s bringing out of the bitter-sweetness in this movement’s Trio, with its quotation of a song from Lieder Eines fahrenden Gesellen, “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz” (“The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved”).

Perhaps the most challenging of the work’s movements was the Finale, which the programme-note-writer called “the longest and most dramatic”.  Mahler was to replicate the “bolt of lightning” opening of this movement in his Second Symphony’s finale as well, but in none of the other symphonies do the finales begin so cataclysmically. Here, Simon and Várjon threw themselves almost bodily into the fray, and wrestled their way to a mid-movement climax of sorts, only to have the music suddenly lose its nerve and change key, modulating upwards and into a kind of “no-person’s land!” Undaunted, the pair bent their backs to the struggle once again (the effort was excitingly palpable for all of us, throughout!) and flung the fanfare figures upwards and outwards once again – and were rewarded when the music’s goal of a triumphal D major was sighted, prepared, driven towards – and sustained! As I wrote at the outset of this review, the achievement was greeted with all due acclaim, the kind of thing which sustains a memory for a long while to come. Bravo, indeed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Menzies and Michael Endres – linking worlds with violin and piano

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music presents
THE MENZIES/ENDRES DUO – Music by Schubert, Schnittke, Fisher and Beethoven

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Rondo in B Minor “Rondo Brilliant”
ALFRED SCHNITTKE – Violin Sonata No. 2 (quasi una sonata)
SALINA FISHER – Mono no aware
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Violin Sonata No. 9 “Kreutzer”

Mark Menzies (violin) and Michael Endres (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 18th June, 2023

This was a well structured, interesting programme, culminating in Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, perhaps the greatest of violin sonatas. The programme notes the connection of the works on the programme to this Sonata and Beethoven: the main theme of Schubert’s Rondo has reference to the first movement of the Kreutzer Sonata, while Schnittke’s Sonata echoes the structure of  Beethoven’s Op 27 piano sonatas, “quasi una fantasia”. This may be a little far fetched, but undoubtedly the programme built up to the climax of Beethoven, while exploring a range of musical idioms in the violin and piano repertoire.

Franz Schubert Rondo in B minor ‘Rondo Brilliant’

Schubert wrote this work for the Czech violinist Josef Slavik. The latter was compared in his circles to Paganini, and was a friend of Schubert. Schubert was essentially a composer of songs, not one noted for the elaborate structures of his works. This piece has beautiful melodic passages interposed with virtuoso displays. It is joyful music, with suggestions of rustic wind band music in places, but ultimately it was not an entirely convincing reading, being very difficult to bring off. In the dialogues between the violin and the piano, some of the nuances of the exchamges were lost. The placing of the violinist with his back to the pianist didn’t help in places, with the voicings not being ideally balanced.

Alfred Schnittke Violin Sonata No 2 (quasi una sonata)

Schnittke’s Second Violin Sonata is a very challenging work, both for the musicians and the audience.  It opens with powerful, discordant chords, separated by precisely timed pauses. This section is followed by a number of distinct episodes, with references to past musicians, from Bach through Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky, to Shostakovitch, though to the listener, hearing the sonata for the first time, none of this is obvious. What is clear is the unrelenting drama, the thought provoking process that pose questions about the nature of music. The musicians have to perform actions that are not part of the normal skill sets of violinists or pianists, free ranging glissandos, unpitched tremolos, drum-like chords.

To add to the drama, one of the strings snapped on the violin. Mark Menzies stopped, walked off the stage, came back with the violin re-strung, carried on, and resumed where had left off. This sonata is one of the masterpieces of the post-Soviet Russian era, but it requires vast preparation and deep understanding. The performance was a true partnership between violin and piano, and whatever misgivings one might have had about the balance of the two instruments in the first work no longer applied.

Salina Fisher Mono no aware

This was a peaceful contrast to the drama of Schnittke’s work. It is a calm ethereal piece of music, simple on the surface, plaintive, a meditation on nature. Is it about the ephemeral beauty of cherry blossoms, an awareness of their fragility and their inherent impermanence, as the composer says in her notes, or is it just a sequel of lovely sounds? It was a “breather” in the midst of an afternoon of intense music.

Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata No 9 ‘Kreutzer’

This is, arguable, the greatest violin and piano sonata ever written. It marked the beginning of what is at times termed, Beethoven’s ‘middle period’, beyond the elegant music of the period of Mozart and Haydn, pointing to an era of more expressive, more emotional, romantic music of the years of his Third and Fifth Symphonies. Beethoven had gone deaf, his life was in turmoil, and he wrote some of his most profound music. The Kreutzer foreshadowed the Waldsdtein and Appassionata sonatas, the Rasumovsky quartets. The sonata is so well known that it is a special challenge for performers not to make it just another Kreutzer, to fathom its meaning in their own individual way. Menzies and Endres started with a leisurely opening, flexible, lyrical. They brought out the grandeur and lyricism of the piece, playing it with a nice, controlled tempo. They had a grand conception of the work, bringing out its sublime beauty, particularly in the second, variation movement, with each variation sensitively articulated. The final movement was played with measured energy. It was a very fine performance and both players appeared to share its enjoyment.

For an encore they returned to Schubert with an arrangement of Schubert’s Hark! Hark! The Lark!

This Sunday afternoon concert was notable for its range, the thought-provoking questions it raised about music. No one went home whistling the tunes from the Schnittke Sonata, or even Salina Fisher’s piece,  but everybody left on a high note after the Beethoven.

Both artists, Mark Menzies and Michael Endres, teach at Canterbury University. They both have established international careers.  Mark Menzies taught at the California Institute of the Arts, and gave violin and viola recitals in Los Angeles. He is an advocate of contemporary music, and tours widely.

Michael Endres performs worldwide as soloist and chamber music partner. He has played at festivals in Europe, America, and Asia, including the Beethoven Fest Bonn and the Salzburg Festival.

We are fortunate to have them here in New Zealand.

 

 

 

 

Breaking the piano recital drought – Michael Houstoun at Waikanae

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Waikanae Music Society presents Michael Houstoun (piano)

Bach Toccata in c minor BWV 911
Brahms Variation and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op 24
Chopin Berceuse, Op 57
                 Impromptu in F#, Op 36
Rachmaninoff Prelude in Eb, Op 23, No 2
Prelude in Eb, Op 23 No 6
                              Étude-tableau in  Eb minor, Op 39, No 5
                              Prelude in D, Op 23, No 4
                              Étude-tableau in C minor Op 33, No 3
                              Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 11 June 2023

 Piano recitals by renowned pianists, featuring major works of the piano repertoire, are now rare in Wellington. Paul Lewis, one of the leading pianists of his generation, dropped in for a concerto appearance with the NZSO, but though he has recorded all the Beethoven Sonatas and much of Schubert, he was not given the opportunity to play these in a solo recital – a sad state of affairs when one recalls from earlier times  the anticipated pleasure of hearing any visiting virtuoso in both the concerto repertoire with the NZSO and on the solo recital platform.

How grateful, therefore concert goers must be to the Waikanae Music Society for putting on solo concerts such as that recently given by Michael Houstoun. Michael Houstoun is something of an ‘Artist in Residence NZ’, widely recognized for his insightful recordings of the  Beethoven Sonatas and his series of concerts that featured Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues. Notably, in this concert, he played also a bracket of works by Rachmaninoff, recognizing the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth and 80th anniversary of his death. However,the first half of the concert was Bach and Brahms.

Bach – Toccata in c minor BWV 911

This is a virtuoso piece that Bach wrote to show off his skills as a keyboard player. It starts with a playful theme, which evolves into a complex substantial fugue.  Houstoun shaped every note, every phrase with care. As a pianist he had complete mastery, but it is the thought behind the notes that stood out, how the work was built up, note by note.

Brahms – Variation and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op 24

This is one of the monumental works of the piano repertoire, 25 variations on a simple theme that Handel employed for his set of variations. But Brahms’ work is on a much grander scale. It ranges from the whimsical, the simple, playful, to the dramatic, culminating in the fugue that asks profound questions about the meaning of life. It is a mirror of life’s journey with all its various facets. It is Brahms’ tribute to an earlier, courtly age, yet reflecting the deep thoughtful romantic vision of his time. Houstoun weighted every note. His playing of the fugue, the climax of the work, was restrained, he left its grandeur to the imagination of the listener. It was a beautifully articulated playing. One may hear different interpretations of this work, but probably never a more disciplined and clear reading. It was a memorable performance.

Chopin – Berceuse, Op 57 , Impromptu in F#, Op 36

Again, in these well-known pieces every sound was clearly defined. Houstoun left it up to the listener to seek out the magic, the emotion. Both of the works were carefully shaped, with a lot of thought behind every note.

Rachmaninoff – Prelude in Bb, Op 23, No 2,   Prelude in Eb, Op 23 No 6
Étude-tableau in  Eb minor, Op 39, No 5,   Prelude in D, Op 23, No 4
Étude-tableau in C minor Op 33, No 3 ,   Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9

These works, both early and middle-period Rachmaninoff, are far less well known than his piano concertos, his Paganini Variations for piano and orchestra, his symphonies, or his big Choral works, but in this anniversary year of Rachmaninoff’s birth it was appropriate to have a glimpse of the pre-American Rachmaninoff, secluded on his estate. Houstoun selected these pieces carefully, three each from his Preludes and his longer  Étude-tableau and he performed them in two sections, suggesting that they formed complementary movements of two larger, sonata-like pieces.  Perhaps, as the program notes say, ‘Rachmaninoff was proud to follow in the footsteps of Chopin’, and these works in some ways harked back to the Chopin of Paris and French romanticism, but they also reflected a very different world, one which Rachmaninoff’s detractors would regularly claim his music refused to enter.

Listening to the first Prelude it was not Chopin, but Moussorgsky that came to mind, as also with the last Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9. These are passionate pieces, but Houstoun played them with characteristic restraint. Not for him the dramatic climaxes, or the swaying emotions – “Just look at the notes, boy, play it as it written!” he seemed to be saying.

This was a fine and memorable concert. It left listeners with lots of thoughts about the meaning of the music that they had just heard. We are fortunate to have Michael Houstoun here as a pillar of New Zealand musical life. He made his listener think not only about the music’s emotions, but also the creative processes reflected by the notes on paper, and from the black and white keys of the piano, from and upon which he gave us his unique interpretations of the music.

Michael Houstoun will be back again later this year, on 27 August, playing with the violinist Bella Hristova in an interesting program of sonatas by Poulenc, Ravel and Fauré.